FOURTH CHAPTER

I. THE POSSIBILITY AND PURPOSE OF AVATARHOOD

1. The Blessed Lord said: This imperishable Yoga ¹I gave to Vivasvan (the Sun-God), Vivasvan gave it to Manu (the father of men), Manu gave it to Ikshvaku (head of the Solar line).

2. And so it came down from royal sage to royal sage till it was lost in the great lapse of Time, 0 Parantapa.

3. This same ancient and original Yoga has been today declared to thee by Me, for thou art My devotee and My friend; this is the highest secret.²

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1 In speaking of this Yoga in which action and knowledge become one, the Yoga of the sacrifice of works with knowledge, in which works are fulfilled in knowledge, knowledge supports, changes and enlightens works and both are offered to the Purushot- tama, the supreme Divinity who becomes manifest within us as Narayana, Lord of all our being and action seated secret in our hearts for ever, who becomes manifest even in the human form as the Avatar, the divine birth taking possession of our humanity, Krishna declares in passing that this was the ancient and original Yoga which he gave to Vivasvan and is now renewed for Arjuna, because he is the lover and devotee, friend and comrade of the Avatar.

2 It is superior to all other forms of Yoga, because those others lead to the impersonal Brahman or to a personal Deity,

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4. Arjuna said: The Sun-God¹ was one of the first- born of beings (ancestor of the solar dynasty) and Thou art only now born into the world; how am I to comprehend that Thou declaredst it to him in the beginning ?

5. The Blessed Lord said: Many are my lives that are past, and thine also, 0 Arjuna; all of them I know, but thou knowest not, 0 scourge of the foe.

6. Though I am the unborn, though I am imperishable in my self-existence, though I am the Lord of all existences, yet I stand upon my own Nature and I come into birth by my self-Maya.²

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to a liberation in actionless knowledge or a liberation in absorb- ed beatitude, but this gives the highest secret and the whole secret; it brings us to divine peace and divine works, to divine knowledge, action and ecstasy unified in a perfect freedom; it unites into itself all the Yogic paths as the highest being of the Divine reconciles and makes one in itself all the different and even contrary powers and principles of its manifested being. Therefore this Yoga of the Gita is not, as some contend, only the Karmayoga, one and the lowest, according to them, of the three paths, but a highest Yoga synthetic and integral directing Godward all the powers of our being.

1. The practical intelligence of Arjuna is baffled by Krishna's assertion that it was he who in ancient times revealed to Vivasvan this Yoga, since lost, which he is now again revealing to Arjuna, and by his demand for an explanation he provokes the famous and oft-quoted statement of Avatarhood and its mundane purpose.

2. To the modern mind Avatarhood is one of the most difficult to accept or to understand of all the ideas that are

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7. Whensoever there is the fading of the Dharma and the uprising of unrighteousness, then I loose myself forth into birth.

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streaming in from the East upon the rationalised human consciousness. The rationalist objects that if God exists, he is extracosmic or supracosmic and does not intervene in the affairs of the world, but allows them to be governed by a fixed machinery of law; he is pure Spirit and cannot put on a body, infinite and cannot be finite as the human being is finite, the ever unborn creator and cannot be the-creature born into the world, — these things are impossible even to his absolute omni- potence. These objections, so formidable at first sight to the reason, seem to have been present to the mind of the Teacher , in the Gita when he says that although the Divine is unborn, ' imperishable in his self-existence, the Lord of all beings, yet he assumes birth by a supreme resort to the action of his Nature and by force of his self-Maya; that he whom the deluded despise because lodged in a human body, is verily in his supreme being the Lord of all; that he is in the action of the divine conscious- ness the creator of the fourfold Law and the doer of the works of the world and at the same time in the silence of the divine consciousness the impartial witness of the works of his own Mature,—for he is always beyond both the silence and the action, the supreme Purushottama. And the Gita is able to meet all these oppositions and to reconcile all these contraries because it starts from the Vedantic view of existence, of God and the universe. For all here is God, is the Spirit or Self- existence, is Brahman, ekamevadwitiyam,—there is nothing else, . nothing other and different from it and there can be nothing else, can be nothing other and different from it. Far from the unborn being unable to assume birth, all beings are even in their individuality unborn spirits, eternal without beginning or end, and in their essential existence and their universality all are the one unborn Spirit of whom birth and death are only a phenomenon of the assumption and change of forms. The assumption of imperfection by the perfect is the whole mystic phenomenon of the universe; but the imperfection appears in the form and action of the mind or body assumed, subsists in the phenomenon,—in that which assumes it there is no imperfection, even as in the Sun which illumines all there is no defect of light or of vision, but only in the capacities of the individual organ of vision.

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8. For the deliverance of the good, for the destruction of the evil-doers, for the enthroning of the Right, I am born from age to age.

9. He who knoweth thus in its right principles my divine birth¹ and my divine work, when he abandons his body, comes not to rebirth, he comes to Me, 0 Arjuna.

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It is notable that with a slight but important variation of language the Gita describes in the same way both the action of the Divine in bringing about the ordinary birth of creatures and his action in his birth as the Avatar. "Leaning upon my own Nature, prakritim svain avashtabhya" it will say later " I loose I forth variously, visrijami, this multitude of creatures helplessly subject owing to the control of Prakriti, avasham prakriter vashat." " Standing upon my own Nature " it says here, " I am born by-my self-Maya, prakritim svam adhishthaya... atmamayaya I loose forth myself, atmanam srijami." The action implied in the word avashtabhya is a forceful downward pressure by which the object controlled is overcome, oppressed, blocked or limited in its movement or working and becomes helplessly subject to the controlling power, avasham vashat; Nature in this action becomes mechanical and its multitude of creatures are held helpless in the mechanism, not lords of their own action. On the contrary the action implied in the word adhishthaya is a dwelling in, but also a standing upon and over the Nature, a conscious control and government by the indwelling Godhead, adhishthatri, devata, in which the Purusha is not helplessly driven by the Prakriti through ignorance, but rather the Prakriti is full of the light and the will of the Purusha.

¹ The language of the Gita shows that the divine birth is that of the conscious Godhead in our humanity and essentially the opposite of the ordinary birth even though the same means are used, because it is not the birth into the Ignorance, but the birth of the knowledge, not a physical phenomenon, but a soul- birth. It is the Soul's coming into birth as the self-existent Being controlling consciously its becoming and not lost to self- knowledge in the cloud of the Ignorance. It is the Soul born into the body as Lord of Nature, standing above and operating

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10. Delivered from liking and fear and wrath, full of me, taking refuge in me, many purified by austerity of knowledge have arrived at my nature of being¹ (madbhavam, the divine nature of the Purushottama).

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in her freely by its will, not entangled and helplessly driven round and round in the mechanism; for it works in the Know- ledge and not, as most do, in the Ignorance. It is the secret Soul in all coming forward from its governing secrecy behind the veil to possess wholly in a human type, but as the Divine, the birth which ordinarily it possesses only from behind the veil as the Ishwara while the outward consciousness in front of the veil is rather possessed than in possession because there it is a partially conscious being, the Jiva lost to self-knowledge and bound in its works through a phenomenal subjection to Nature. The Avatar* therefore is a direct manifestation in humanity by Krishna, the Divine Soul, of that divine condition of being to which Arjuna, the human soul, the type of ahighest human being, a Vibhuti, is called upon by the Teacher to arise, and to which he can only arise by climbing out of the ignorance and limitation of his ordinary humanity. It is the manifestation from above of that which we have to develop from below; it is the descent of God into that divine birth of the human being into which we mortal creatures must climb; it is the attracting divine example given by God to man in the very type and form and perfected model of our human existence.

*The word Avatar means a descent; it is a coming down of the Divine below the line which divides the divine from the human world or status.

1 We have to remark carefully that the upholding of Dharma in the world is not the only object of the descent of the Avatar, the great mystery of the Divine .manifest in humanity; for the upholding of the Dharma is not an all- sufficient object in itself, not the supreme possible aim for the manifestation of a Christ, a Krishna, a Buddha, but is only the general condition of a higher aim and a more supreme and divine utility. For there are two aspects of the divine birth; one is a descent, the birth of God in humanity, the Godhead manifesting itself in the human form and nature, the eternal Avatar; the other is an ascent, the birth of man into the Godhead, man rising into the divine nature and consciousness, madbhavam agatah; it is the being born anew in a second birth of the soul. It is that new birth which Avatarhood and the upholding of the Dharma are intended to serve. If there were

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11. As men approach Me, so I accept them to My love (bhajami); men follow in every way my path, 0 son of Pritha.

12. They who desire the fulfilment¹ of their works on earth sacrifice to the gods (various forms and personalities of the one Godhead); because the fulfilment that is born of works (of works without knowledge) is very swift and easy in the human world.

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not this rising of man into the Godhead to be helped by the descent of God into humanity, Avatarhood for the sake of the Dharma would be an otiose phenomenon, since mere Right, mere justice or standards of virtue can always be upheld by the divine omnipotence through its ordinary means, by great men or great movements, by the life and work of sages and kings and religions teachers, without any actual incarnation. The Avatar comes as the manifestation of the divine nature in the human nature, the apocalypse of its Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood, in order that the human nature may by mould- ing its principle, thought, feeling, action, being on the lines of that Christhood, Krishnahood, Buddhahood transfigure itself into the divine. The law, the Dharma which the Avatar establishes is given for that purpose chiefly; the Christ, Krishna, Buddha stands in its centre as the gate, he makes through himself the way men shall follow. That is why each Incarna- tion holds before men his own example and declares of himself that he is the way and the gate; he declares too the oneness of his humanity with the divine being, declares that the Son of Man and the Father above from whom he has descended are one, that Krishna in the human body, manushim tanum ashritam, and the supreme Lord and Friend of all creatures are but two revelations of the same divine Purushottama, revealed there in his own being, revealed here in the type of humanity.

1 The other, the divine self-fulfilment in man by the sacrifice with knowledge to the supreme Godhead, is much more difficult; its results belong to a higher plane of existence and they are less easily grasped. Men therefore have to follow the fourfold law of their nature and works and on this plane of mundane action they seek the Godhead through his various qualities.

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13. The fourfold¹ order was created by Me according to the divisions of quality and active function. Know Me for the doer of this (the fourfold law of human workings ) who am yet the imperishable non-doer.

14. Works fix not themselves on Me, nor have I desire for the fruits of action; he who thus knoweth Me ² is not bound by works.

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1 The Gita doss not take the fourfold order in the narrow sense in which it is commonly understood, nor does it regard it as an eternal and universal social order (Chapter XVIII)
The fourfold order of society is merely the concrete form of a spiritual truth which is itself independent of the form; it rests on the conception of right works as a rightly ordered expression of the nature of the individual being through whom the work is done, that nature assigning him his line and scope in life according to his inborn quality and his self-expressive function.

2 The giving of the example of God himself to the liberated man is profoundly significant; for it reveals the whole basis of the Gita's philosophy of divine works. The liberated man is he who has exalted himself into the divine nature and according to that divine nature must be his actions. But what is the divine nature ? It is not entirely and solely that of the Akshara, the immobile, inactive, impersonal self; for that by itself would lead the liberated man to actionless immobility. It is not characteristically that of the Kshara, the multitudinous, the personal, the Purusha self-subjected to Prakrit!; for that by itself would lead him back into subjection to his personality and the lower nature and its qualities. It is the nature of the Purushottama who holds both these together and by his supreme divinity reconciles them in a divine reconciliation which is the highest secret of his being, rahasyam hyetad uttamam. He is not the doer of works in the personal sense of our action involved in Prakriti; for God works through his power, conscious nature, effective force,—Shakti, Maya, Prakriti —but yet above it, not involved in it, not subject to it, not unable to lift himself beyond the laws, workings, habits of action it creates, not affected or bound by them, not unable to

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15. So knowing was work done by the men of old who sought liberation; do therefore, thou also, work of that more ancient kind done by ancient men ¹

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distinguish himself, as we are unable, from the workings of life, mind and body. He is the doer of works who acts not, kartaram akm'taram.

1 The inner fruit of the Avatar's coming is gained by those who learn from it the true nature of the divine birth and the divine works and who, growing full of him in their consciousness and taking refuge in him with their whole being, manmaya mam upashrifah, purified by the realising force of their knowledge and delivered from the lower nature, attain to the divine being and divine nature, madbhavam. The Avatar comes to reveal the divine nature in man above this lower nature and to show what are the divine works, free, unegoistic, disinterested, impersonal, universal, full of the divine light, the divine power and the divine love. He comes as the divine personality which shall fill the consciousness of the human being and replace the limited egoistic personality, so that it shall be liberated out of ego into infinity and universality, out of birth into immortality. He comes as the divine power and love which calls men to itself, so that they may take refuge in that and no longer in the insufficiency of their human wills and the strife of their human fear, wrath and passion, and liberated from all this unquiet and suffering may live in the calm and bliss of the Divine. Nor does it matter essentially in what form and name or putting forward what aspect of the Divine lie comes ; for in all ways, varying with their nature, men are following the path set to them by the Divine which will in the end lead them to him, and the aspect of him which suits their nature is that which they can best follow when he comes to lead them; in whatever way men accept, love and take joy in God, in that way God accepts, loves and takes joy in man.

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